OCTOBER Leaves change and nights grow chilly
"October has trouble making up its mind. It brings the first frost, then sets you basking in the sun. Sometimes, during a warm spell, what sounds like the squeak of a bird is a wood frog or a spring peeper, hunkering down under the leaf litter where it will spend the winter. The occasional chorusing of frogs is called the “fall echo.”
Juncos and other “winter” birds begin arriving from farther north. The cheeping of white-throated sparrows fills the early twilights as they gather to roost in dense shrubs. Robins, waxwings, and lingering warblers swarm black cherry trees and pick off any remaining fruit. Cherry seeds that travel through a bird’s body have a better chance of sprouting.
If you could ever get there first, you’d find sweet cherries of superbflavor, the juice that early American colonists mixed with brandy or rum to make a drink called cherry bounce. The caterpillars that have been munching on cherry’s glossy leaves are now building cocoons in its branches. If you scratch a cherry twig near the reddish leaf-stems, it smells a bit like almond. The inner bark is still used for cough remedies." -Kateri Kosek from The Forest Revealed October posters and autographed copies of the book are available in my Etsy shop now.
